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A reader from Helper, Utah, writes that a few years ago she was at a fast-food restaurant with
her children and saw a group of teenagers sliding down the slides in the play area on food
trays.

“They were big kids and going very fast on those trays,” she writes.

She walked up to the teens and chewed them out.

“I told them they didn’t belong in there, that what they were doing at their size and at those
speeds would kill any kid they hit. I told them that, if they didn’t leave immediately, I wasn’t
calling the manager; I was calling the cops.”

The teenagers left.

“The other parents in the room thanked me,” she writes. “None of them said ‘boo’ to those
teenagers. They just got their kids away from them and let the teenagers take over.”

Another reader, from Columbus, writes about the time a couple of summers ago he was driving down
a main highway. A young woman in a convertible passed him in the right-hand lane and then cut him
off while exceeding the speed limit by what he estimates was at least 30 mph.

As the light ahead of them turned red, the woman pulled into the left-turn lane and stopped for
the light.

“I pulled next to her while waiting for the light to turn green,” my reader writes. “I looked
down at the young lady thinking that I would ‘glare’ at her to show my displeasure at the way she
was driving.”

As he looked down, the driver looked up and glared back at him.

“What are you looking at, old man?” she said.

“You’re using your cellphone, smoking, not signaling to turn and driving like you want to die.
You’ll never be an old woman,” he recalls telling her, noticing as she pulled away to make her left
turn that her turn signal wasn’t activated.

Did these readers do the right thing by confronting these people?

The driver wasn’t wrong to say something. Given the litany of bad behavior he noted, it’s not
clear that what he said would keep the other driver from continuing to be a menace as she drove on.
But he spoke up.

The mother in Utah saw a situation that others chose not to confront and decided to tackle it
head on. Her actions resulted in rescuing the play area for the children for whom it is intended.
That other parents stood by and didn’t say anything might not have been ideal, but knowing that
they were there when she confronted the teenagers should have given her some comfort in case the
teens weren’t so compliant.

When someone’s public actions threaten the safety of others, particularly young children, the
right thing is to speak up. Doing so without adding to their or your own safety risk wherever
possible is the wise course of action. If you don’t speak up about bad behavior, who will?

Jeffrey L. Seglin, a lecturer in public policy, directs the communication program at the
Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Mass.